Memorial Day - Everyone reminds

Memorial Day - Everyone reminds you of this - but take a few minutes to remember those who died for this country. Maybe even pass some of the facts along to our woefully-educated kids.

In these days, when we fight wars 10,000 miles away with cold-eyed professionals and casualty rolls fit handily one one page of notebook paper, most students don't know - because most of their teachers don't know, either - that as many Americans died in World War II as currently live in Minneapolis. At least 2.5 times that many were injured. That means that of the 10 million Americans who served in World War II, nearly 1 in 11 was killed, wounded, captured, or hurt in some way; it was not a paltry risk, in those days, and most of those who went had no choice. Enough Americans were killed in the drive from Normandy to Paris - from June to September of 1944 - to fill the Metrodome. The Marines that were killed in a month on Iwo Jima - 5,000 - died taking an area not much bigger than the U of M St. Paul Campus, with the Ag station.

And the average age of those dead was 23 years. 1/3 of their life expectancy.

My ex-father-in-law lived past his life expectancy, thankfully; he passed away on Martin Luther King day, this past January. He joined the Navy the morning after Pearl Harbor, at age 20, along with most of his seven brothers. It was week after his wedding. He served on the battleship USS Iowa for a cruise, then spent the rest of the war on the destroyer USS Collett. He once spent 18 months aboard, without setting foot on land. He shot down a Kamikaze, narrowly evaded being torpedoed, and came back four years later. I'll be visiting his grave - he's my kids' grandfather - this weekend.

Hope you all do something similar.